Why John McCain turned on Chuck Hagel

Well into last week, Sen. John McCain was telling confidantes that he would vote for cloture on the nomination of his one-time pal and fellow Vietnam veteran Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary.

Then Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) came to McCain’s Senate office late Wednesday afternoon and turned around the Arizona Republican — a switch that proved decisive the next day when Hagel came one short of the 60 votes needed for cloture on the Senate floor. Now, Hagel’s confirmation roll call is delayed until at least after a weeklong Presidents Day recess.

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For old McCain allies, it was an all-too familiar scenario: Their champion pulled back into the fray by his friend Graham, a likable but impulsive figure caught up in his own political battles with the right in South Carolina. By reversing himself, McCain effectively sacrificed his own credibility to buy Graham more time to continue his campaign against Hagel — an issue that plays to Graham’s advantage as he prepares to run for reelection in 2014.

“This is just a bone thrown to Lindsey Graham, who keeps painting himself into corners and then pleading with friends to crawl in there with him in a vain attempt to save a little face,” one Republican insider told POLITICO. And making it more poignant and personal in this case: The Graham friendship dominated at the expense of McCain’s earlier one with Hagel.

Taking full advantage of his win, Graham continued to push all the hot political buttons Sunday.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, he said that Hagel has shown an “antagonism toward Israel” that is “beyond belief.” “I am glad we have more time to look,” Graham said. “We’re doing our job to scrutinize one of the most unqualified, radical choices for secretary of defense in a very long time.”

McCain, while not backing down, was more restrained.

“He is my friend,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said of Hagel on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “He will be confirmed. … I don’t believe he is qualified, but I don’t believe that we should hold up his nomination any further because I think it is a reasonable amount of time to have questions answered.”

As to Wednesday’s meeting between McCain and Graham, both camps were tight-lipped. Neither confirmed nor denied POLITICO’s reporting. “I’m just going to leave it there,” said a Graham spokesman. In response to questions first submitted Friday, McCain’s office came back with a statement Sunday that it also would not comment on his discussions with Graham.

“There was broad agreement in the conference that a brief delay was warranted to address any issues still outstanding,” a McCain spokesman said. “This wasn’t just about one member or one line of inquiry.”

Nonetheless, the turnaround on the cloture vote underscores the tangle of emotions raised by the Hagel nomination for McCain — who can seem one minute aggressive and the next tortured, pulled three ways at once.

At 76, he has reached the point where his career literally spans generations in his party. Forever linked to the Vietnam War, he tangles now with a new tea party breed like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is Ivy League, bright and articulate but born years after McCain’s plane went down in 1967 and seemingly clueless about what Hagel went through a year later in the infantry on the ground.

Indeed, the Hagel fight resurrects a checklist of post-Vietnam McCain battles: the John Tower nomination in 1989, the bitter South Carolina presidential primary in 2000 and the Iraq War debate — many of which also predate his colleagues today.